We’ve updated our regular Worldwide FM playlist with upfront and reissued music from around the world. Listen throughout the month on air, or to enjoy on the move, subscribe or follow the playlist on Spotify and Soundcloud.

Astral Travel – Tomorrow’s Destiny [Hyperjazz]
Becker & Mukai – The Double [Sounds and Songs]
Charlotte Dos Santos – The Snow Dance [Because Music]
Jockstrap – Acid [Warp]
L’Eclair – Dallas [Bongo Joe]
Princess Nokia – I am Free [Self Released]
Shy One – House Party [Rhythm Section]
Ultraista – Tin King [Partisan]
Yazmin Lacey – Morning Matters [Own Your Own]
Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange – River Run Deep [The Jazz Diarys]
Roza Terenzi – Spiral [Planet Euphorique]
Chris Montague – Irish Handcuffs [Whirlwind Recordings]
Deerhoof – Future Teenage Cave Artists [Joyful Noise]
Y-Bayani & Baby Naa And The Band of Enlightenment, Reason & Love – Zooba Maka [Philophon]
Romaal Kultan – Everlasting Romance [Tiffs Joints]
Asher Gamedze – Siyabulela [On The Corner]
Daniel Avery & Alessandro Cortini – Enter Exit [Phantasy]
DJ Lycox – Jam [Príncipe]
Alex Attias – I Wanna Know [Visions]
Amia – Ecosex (Ibo Love) [Unreleased]
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers – Quick Trick [Bluenote]
Atmosfear – DiOS 2020 [Unreleased]
Bullion – O Vermona [Deek]
Butcher Brown – Tidal Wave [Concord Jazz]
caroline – Dark Blue [Rough Trade]
Chapelier Fou – La vie de Cocagne [Ici d’ailleurs]
Chekov – Swerl (33’d) [Peach Discs]
Christian McBride – The Movement Revisited [Mack Avenue Records]
Cleo Sol – When I’m in Your Arms [Forever Living]
Collocutor – Deep Peace [On The Corner]
D.A.N. – #takeyourtime [SSWB / Bayron Production]
Deyah – Planet X [Unreleased]
Fatima & Joe Armon-Jones Band – Only (Live from Maida Vale) [Brownswood]
Favourite People – Shell Island [Selva]
Fess Grandiose – RMG (The Flower Of Life) [ETC]
Footshooter – Lay (ft. Natty Wylah) [Dance Regular]
Gary Bartz & Maisha – Leta’s Dance [Night Dreamer]
Gaye Su Akyol – Anlasana Sana Aşığım (Doğu Çivicik’s Schnell Schnell Remix) [Vesverse]
George Posse – Touch a Four Leaf Clover (feat. Toyin Adekale) [Athens of The North]
Gogo Penguin – Atomised [Decca]
Green-House – Chysis [Leaving Records]
Greg Fox – From the Cessation of What [RVNG Intl]
Marihiko Hara – Passion [Beat Records]
Havazelet Ron – El Warda [Todres Records]
Henrik Schwarz & Bugge Wesseltoft – In Spite Of Everything [Sunday Music]
Heroes are Gang Leaders – Hurt Cult [Ropeadope]
Hodge – Lanacut [Houndstooth]
Irreversible Entanglements – Bread Out Of Stone [International Anthem]
Isayahh Wuddha – Elephant Wave [WotNot Music]
J Rick – Short [Warner]
Jadasea – Laments [Matters Research]
Jay Electronica – Fruits Of The Spirit [Roc Nation]
Jeanette N’Diaye – Makom Ma Bobe (Mendel Edit) [Kalita]
JK Group – Lennie [La Sape]
Jujju Music – Rainbow Moon [unknown]
K Frimpong And Super Complex – Ahyewa Special [Hot Casa Music]
Kamaal Wiliams – Suttin [Black Focus]
Kate NV – Sayonara [RVNG Intl]
Kelly Moran – Sodalis [Temporary Residence]
Lafawndah – Deep See [Concordia]
Lamont Butler – Ungodly War [Ungodly War]
Laneous – Elsewhere [Soul Has No Tempo]
Lay-Far – All Massive [Eureka]
Les Amazones d’Afrique – Queens [Real World Records]
Little Dragon – Rush [Ninja Tune]
LNDFK – Don’t Know I’m Dead or Not [Unknown]
Lorenzo Senni – Canone Infinito [Warp]
Los Bitchos – Pista [Los Bitchos]
Lunch Money Life – Truth Serum [Scenic Route]
Maajo – Aamuapoltan [Queen Nanny]
Marlon Hunter – Did You Forget My Number [Favorite Recordings]
Martín Buscaglia – Me Enamoré [Montevideo]
Maurice Fulton – One Itself [Gudu Records]
Minor Science – Spoken And Unspoken [Whities]
Molchat Doma – ‹ˇ‹° ‹‰‹∏‹µ
Moses Sumney – Cut Me [Jagjaguar]
Muriel Grossmann – Your Pace [self-released]
Nicolás Jaar – Faith Made of Silk [Other People]
Nils Frahm – No Step On Wing [Erased Tapes]
Noah Howard – Kanpai [Sconsolato Records]
Ohmme – 3 2 4 3 [Joyful Noise]
Ojerime – Empty [Fang]
Oscar Jerome – Sun For Someone [Self released]
Pa Salieu – Frontline (Yussef Days Remix) [Warner]
Phenomenal Handclap Band – Skyline [Toy Tonics]
Photay – Warmth In The Coldest Acre [Mexican Summer]
Pluralist & Rex Domino – Pandemic [Manuka]
Rabii Harnoune & VB Kuhl – Traveller [Tru Thoughts]
Ranil – Las Oladas [Analog Africa]
Rejoicer – Aura Sight [Stones Throw]
Ricardo Richaid – O Velho Cai [Far Out]
Santrofi – Kwabena amoah [Outhere Records]
Sarathy Korwar – Birthright (feat. Zia Ahmed, Mirande & Swadesi) [The Leaf Label]
Stalawa ft Ponchita Peligros – Lovers Connection [Self Relased]
Tenderlonious – Trenton Place [Jazz Detective]
The Maghreban & Idris Rahman – Lion Of Judah [Unreleased]
Thiago Nassif – Soar Estranho [Unreleased]
Thundercat – Fair Chance feat. Ty Dolla $ign and Lil B [Brainfeeder]
TOKiMONSTA – Renter’s Anthem [Self Released]
Vula Viel – My Own Skin [Self Released]
Wilma Archer – Cheater featuring Sudan Archives [Domino]
Yaeji – Waking Up Down [Self Released]
Yakul – Streetlight [Self Released]
YJA – La Serena [Self Released]
Yves Tumor – Gospel For A New Country [Warp]

Okumu, Herbert, Skinner – Undone: Live at the Crypt [The Vinyl Factory]

Our album of the week is coming from Dave Okumu, Tom Herbert (The Invisible) & Tom Skinner (Sons of Kemet/Hello Skinny) as they join forces on a live album for Undone: Live at the Crypt out on The Vinyl Factory in November 2019.

On the night of 15th June 2018, three friends, Dave Okumu, Tom Herbert and Tom Skinner came together to perform a selection of deconstructed compositions in an improvisatory format at The Crypt in Camberwell, south-east London. Their shared history as musicians stretches back to their formative teenage years when they would congregate to learn how to play the music which had impacted so heavily on their lives, resulting in a distillation of funk, soul, pop, metal, classical, punk, hip hop, dance, folk, electronic and world music, filtered through the prism of the endlessly resourceful, inventive and expressive language of jazz.

Their individual and collective journeys have woven them into the fabric of contemporary music through their work with artists as diverse as Adele, Grace Jones, Anna Calvi, Amy Winehouse, Sons Of Kemet, Kano, Lianne La Havas, Zero 7, Ed O’Brien, Jack De Johnette, Jessie Ware, Yoko Ono and Polar Bear. Their personal visions have come to fruition via their own projects, namely Okumu and Herbert’s Mercury-nominated The Invisible and Skinner’s solo outing as Hello Skinny.

Somehow, that informal night in Camberwell would represent the closing of a circle and the beginning of a new chapter for these three musicians.

You can also listen back to the OHS Trio and Shabaka Hutchings performing live together here.

Tracklist:

A1 – Timeless Pt.1
A2 – Timeless Pt.2
A3 – Undo
B1 – Landcruisin’
B2 – Sunrise
B3 – Miles Beyond
C1 – No More
C2 – Billy Preston/Spiral
D1 – So What
D2 – Lucian
D3 – Lying
D4 – One For Charles

Credits:

*Includes live versions of tracks by John Abercrombie, Björk, Miles Davis and more, alongside Okumu, Herbert, Skinner originals.
* Recorded live at The Crypt, Camberwell, London on Friday June 15th, 2018
* Recorded by Winston Skerritt
* Edited and Mixed by Tom Skinner
* Mastered by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering
* Artwork and design by Paul Camo
* Photography by George Nelson
* Limited edition of 1000
* Release date: 08/11/2019

We’re New Again – A Re-imagining by Makaya McCraven [XL Recordings]

Our album of the week is a celebration of beautiful music and Gil Scott-Heron’s birthday (April 1st, 1949), ‘We’re New Again – A Re-imagining by Makaya McCraven‘, out on XL Recordings.

In February 2010, the late, legendary musician, poet and author Gil Scott-Heron released his thirteenth, and last, studio album. First conceptualised in 2005, and ultimately produced by XL Recordings head Richard Russell during New York recording sessions that commenced in January 2008, I’m New Here was Scott-Heron’s first album in thirteen years and found him sounding as vital and insightful as ever before. It was, and still is, a record that reveals something unexpected at every turn; one that found Scott-Heron pushing, probing and testing the limits just as he always had; always looking forward, still challenging conventions and expectations.

To mark the tenth anniversary of I’m New Here’s release, XL Recordings will release a unique reimagining of the album by the acclaimed Chicago-based musician Makaya McCraven, whose work Russell first discovered after hearing McCraven’s “Above & Beyond,” from 2017’s Highly Rare album. Equally renowned and revered as a musician, drummer, sampler, beat-maker and producer, McCraven is widely regarded as one of the most exciting and original voices in modern jazz via a run of records that were at once genre-defying and redefining such as Universal Beings, Highly Rare and Where We Come From (CHICAGOxLONDON mixtape) for the highly influential Chicago label International Anthem. As the New York Times states: “Makaya McCraven has quietly become one of the best arguments for jazz’s vitality.”

On We’re New Again – recorded and produced in the main at his Chicago home studio with a host of close-knit musicians – McCraven fuses the kind of killer, improvised live musicianship and electronic, sample-based approach to recording he’s renowned for with that vocal – the deep, stop-you-in-your–tracks, worldly-wise voice of Gil Scott-Heron – to enormously powerful effect. The resulting record is a sonically rich, totally original yet deeply respectful accompanying piece to Scott-Heron and Russell’s original work and is the latest stage in the evolution of a record that was previously remixed by Jamie xx in 2011 for the ground-breaking collaborative album We’re New Here.

Tracklist:

1. Special Tribute (Broken Home pt.1)
2. I’m New Here
3. Running
4. Blessed Parents
5. New York is Killing Me
6. The Patch (Broken Home pt.2)
7. People of The Light
8. Being Blessed
9. Where Did the Night Go
10. Lily Scott (Broken Home pt.3)
11. I’ll Take Care of You
12. I’ve Been Me
13. This Can’t Be Real.
14. Piano Player
15. The Crutch
16. Guided (Broken Home pt.4)
17. Certain Bad Things
18. Me and the Devil

Shabaka And The Ancestors – We Are Sent Here By History [Impulse! Records]

Our album of the week is coming from a crucial part of our Worldwide FM family, Shabaka And The Ancestors. “We Are Sent Here By History” is out on Impulse! on the 13th of March, 2020.

Shabaka & The Ancestors have made their impulse! Records debut on March 13th with the band’s second studio album We Are Sent Here By History. With their breakout 2016 album, Wisdom of Elders, Shabaka & The Ancestors were established as a sudden force in spiritual jazz. But where that record warned of impending societal collapse, this one unfolds within it. Shabaka Hutchings, tenor saxophonist and clarinettist of the collective, refers to the album as a “meditation on the fact of our coming extinction as a species. It is a reflection from the ruins, from the burning.” On the lead single “Go My Heart, Go To Heaven” vocalist Siyabonga pays homage to his father’s favourite church song. The word “hamba” (or “go”) is repeated, and within the context of this track, it’s “about the point where one gives in and wants out of this world,” Siyabonga says. “But in times of darkness is a call to the light and the heart.”

Shabaka & The Ancestors formed in 2016. Shabaka had been flying to Johannesburg to play with trumpeter and bandleader Mandla Mlangeni, who connected him to a group of South African jazz musicians that Hutchings admired. After several sessions, their first album Wisdom of Elders was made. This follow-up record reunites the group, who recorded again in Johannesburg and Cape Town last year (2019). This album is more urgent, more unrelenting, darker and energetic, and presents a major social commentary in the context of ancient traditions. Shabaka explains this is “what happens after that point when life as we know it can’t continue.”

We Are Sent Here By History explores African and Afro-Caribbean traditions. The album takes the concept of the griot – the living archive of a historical narrative, the storyteller and contextualizer, and presents the album as the modern-day griot. An integral aspect to the project is the accompanying text to the album: South African performance artist Siyabonga Mthembu chants and sings on this record and composed lyrics for the album. Shabaka then chose song titles from the lyrics and composed poems around each title, based on Siyabonga’s lyrics. On the aptly titled “We Will Work (On Redefining Manhood),” Siyabonga sings a poem in Zulu that, when translated to English, shuns the archaic pillars of virility. From childhood, young boys are trained to suppress their emotions and suffer in silence. “This song sings from the point of the toxic masculine,” Siyabonga says. “It repeats the sentences they tell to their boys—to not cry, to not grieve and to not hurt.”

Hutchings has three primary projects – Shabaka And The Ancestors, Sons Of Kemet and The Comet is Coming – with a substantial number of awards and nominations between them, including winning the 2013 MOBO ‘Jazz Act of the Year’, Jazz FM Awards ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ (2015), ‘UK Jazz Act of the Year’ (2017) and ‘Jazz Innovation of the Year’ (2018), and Mercury Music Prize-nominations in 2016 and 2018.

Tracklist:

1. They Who Must Die (10:10)
2. You’ve Been Called (6:29)
3. Go My Heart, Go To Heaven (6:41)
4. Behold, The Deceiver (6:01)
5. Run, The Darkness Will Pass (4:09)
6. The Coming Of The Strange Ones (6:28)
7. Beast Too Spoke Of Suffering (2:58)
8. We Will Work (On Redefining Manhood) (5:24)
9. ’Til The Freedom Comes Home (7:06)
10. Finally, The Man Cried (5:48)
11. Teach Me How To Be Vulnerable (2:46)

Credits:

Shabaka Hutchings – Tenor Sax and clarinet
Mthunzi Mvubu – Alto Sax
Siyabonga Mthembu – Vocals
Ariel Zamonsky – Double bass
Gontse Makhene – Percussion
Tumi Mogorosi – Drums
Nduduzo Makhathini (Fender Rhodes), Thandi Ntuli (piano),Mandla Mlangeni (trumpet) on select tracks

Gigi Masin – Calypso [Apollo Records]

Our album of the week is Venetian producer Gigi Masin’s ambient and downtempo masterpiece, ‘Calypso’ out on Apollo Records on the 28th of February 2020.

The LP is inspired by the mythical Greek island of Ogygia and its alleged real life counterpart Gavdos – also known unofficially as Calypso – a place of extreme beauty, which upon visiting had a profound effect on the musician.

The other keys to Masin’s creation are Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ and Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’, all of which feature the tale of the goddess-nymph Calypso, who imprisoned king Odysseus on Ogygia for seven years.

The aqueous and sky-filled vistas of his native Venice are deeply intrinsic, but the best and simplest way to describe ‘Calypso’s sound might simply be Aegean, as every track takes you directly and vividly there – to timeless Greek beauty, glistening seas, picturesque landscapes and the sun’s bright, balmy heat.

But, much more than just pleasant dapples of twinkling of audio balm, ‘Calypso’ is music of the gods, goddesses and heroes, subliminally capturing all the celestial beauty, awe, romance and adventure of an epic saga.

The album – like the island itself – evokes a sense of intrigue, hinting at the dark and dangerous, made mellow with centuries of age, but still just palpable through the sands of time.

“Gavdos gives you profound sensations in every corner, as here you can find enchantment, mystery, the getting lost to forget, to erase and drown the memories in a light and salty water. A place new and ancient, between cedars that have seen exiles, pestilences, blood and desperation, isolation and abandonment, it’s the absolute of a life that every heart in love seeks, desperately, in the arms of Calypso, divine among the goddesses. An infinite love, and the infinite horizon of our dreams”, says Masin, eloquently.

Although instruments can be discerned if concentrating, and although identifiable as electronic music, it feels more like the elements are his ensemble – a multi-track tape machine filled with channels of water, warmth and breeze. This is the beatific sound of a relaxed mind, freed to wander in far away places of metaphysical awe.

‘Calypso’ was, in fact, made using “the same old software, a simple, sort of a child-proof game from the mid 90s or what experts call a ‘beta’. It’s a kind of mixer where you have to insert the music files as they are, naked and simply as recorded. But it works like I have 6 or 8 tape recorders where my sounds are not locked, so my chance of giving them a perfect position isn’t always certain. Often it seems the sound found its own way without human logic, and the music appears as a revelation”, Gigi explains.

Masin’s debut album ‘Wind’ went underappreciated on its release in 1986, but later gained a cult following among late night radio listeners. His 1989 joint LP for Sub Rosa with This Heat’s Charles Hayward – ‘Les Nouvelles Musiques Du Chambre – took on a life of its own when his track ‘Clouds’ was sampled by Björk, Post Malone, To Rococo Rot, Main Attrakionz, Black Eyes Peas and Nujabes, but Gigi remained in obscurity.

Aptly released on Apollo, ‘Calypso’ joins a label who count other classics like Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works 85 – 92’, plus Biosphere’s ‘Microgravity’ and ‘Patashnik’ in its catalogue.

Climbing in incremental steps to the pantheon’s summit, Masin now is close to reaching his rightful place alongside giants like Brian Eno, Laurie Spiegel, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tangerine Dream and Midori Takada.

Track list:

A1 ‘Calypso’
A2 ‘Bellamore’
A4 ‘Nefertiti’
A4 ‘If’
B1 ‘Anemone’
B2 ‘Khalifa Golf Club’
B3 ‘Mayo Slide’
B4 ‘Susan Maybe’
C1 ‘Amaranta’
C2 ‘Coraline’
C3 ‘How To Disappear In A Kiss’
C4 ‘Cry Winds Or Flames’
D1 ‘Enter Venus’
D2 ‘On Demons And Diamonds’ – with Ben Vince
D3 ‘The Water Sibyl’
D4 ‘Your Name Is My Infinite’

SIBUSILE XABA – NGIWU SHWABADA [Komos Records]

Our album of the week is Sibusile Xaba’s ‘Ngiwu Shwabada’ out on Komos Records on the 14th of February, 2020.

Charismatic guitar savant Sibusile Xaba reframes maskandi and the avant garde into his own humanist manifesto.

With a vocal style that is part dreamscaping and part ancestral invocation, Xaba divines as opposed to plainly singing. Combined with a guitar style that is rooted in expressive picking, Xaba’s music shatters the confines of genre, taking only the fundamentals from mentors such as Madala Kunene and Dr Philip Tabane and imbuing these with a mythology and improvisational intensity all of his own. The song TRIBUTE TO BAFO that features on this new record is an homage to Madala “Bafo” Kunene.

Maskandi, malombo, the desert blues and jazz all figure in Sibusile Xaba’s expansive vocabulary, albeit through a magnetic individual filter.

After the acclaimed release of ‘Opened Letter to Adoniah’ in 2017, Sibusile’s second album NGIWU SHWABADA was recorded in one continuous take at Studio Pigalle in Paris, France, in May 2019. It features his long-time musical companion Naftali on additional vocals.

Sibusile explains the philosophy behind this second album NGIWU SHWABADA ( I am of SHWABADA – a spiritual lineage) : ‘The record is a dedication to my ancestors for all the love, blessings and guidance they continue to share.These songs are conversations I have had with them, transmitted into songs to be shared with mankind. The elements of the record are waters & the great feminine spirit.’

To close the album, London saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings joins Sibusile for a purely improvised 18 minute musical trip recorded that same day. ‘Phefumula is a journey of still minds, with a focus on the importance and simplicity of breathing. After a practical breathing session Shabaka & I were granted time to explore worlds and receive messages to be shared – we were gracefully granted to be vessels who receive.’

Tracklist:

1. INTRO
2. ELIHLE
3. UMNDENI
4. UQONDILE
5. MVELO
6. NGIWU SHWABADA
7. AFRIKA
8. UYAHLUPHA
9. MAKWANDE LWENDE
10. ABAKHOHLWANGA
11. TRIBUTE TO BAFO
12. PHEFUMULA feat. SHABAKA HUTCHINGS